


Hailing Frequencies

by karrenia_rune



Category: Calling Occupants of Intereplanetary Craft-Klattu song
Genre: Challenge Response, Gen, messages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 03:07:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6498349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The version of the song is the cover by the Carpenters</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hailing Frequencies

Disclaimer: the song was originally by Klattu the version I'm familiar with is the cover by the Carpenters. Written for 2016 Be the First Challenge.  
The characters who appear here are my own.

"Harmonics and Messages" by Karrenia

It's said that on a clear day you can see forever, and that true up to a point. Jill Scott had taken the job offer from the observatory on Mount Kea Mountain located on the Big Island of the Hawaiian islands not just because she wanted to get away from the hot summers and cold winters of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. But also because of the ground-breaking discoveries that were being made in stellar cartography and telescope telemetry.

My hopes had been borne out and for a while, all had gone well. Not even the most skeptic of astronomers had been completely hostile to the idea of we here on this green-blue marble were not alone in the universe.  
Her director, Manuel De Luna had even called her into his office and advised her that within the last twenty to fifteen years a significant shift in peoples thinking on the subject had occurred that had lent more and more credence to exploring the idea that intelligent life was out there somewhere in the galaxy and it was only a matter of time and patience until we made contact with them.

So we built our long-range telescopes and sent out our probes with messages in the form of binary code and electronic pulses and tried to be patient. It was a good thing that computers we had set up to monitor the responses we got back were able to run remotely, because what with being sleep-deprived I think I might have come to resemble a raccoon.

Martin, one of my teammates who also seemed to be able to function on nothing except coffee and Chinese takeout, was the one present in the observatory lab when it happened.

At first when I heard the signal it had sounded more like white noise or something one imagines hearing just on the edge of waking. Repeated playback and tinkering with the audio modulator made it clearer but no less indistinguishable. We kept at it, figuring that a meaning would become clearer. 

Was it meant to be a message to us, or a response to our hailing frequencies?

Never let it be said that scientists don't indulge in whimsy once in a while. But I digress. Martin, Lucinda, and Kendo, a Japanese communications expert, kept at it.

Lucinda said that she was Melissa Ethridge fan and she began to hum a lyric " You can't change the signal just the message that it sends"

"Could Lucinda may be on the right track?" I asked. "Could be, could be," Kendo nodded, thumbing his chin the way I remembered my old physics professor at Cal Tech used to do.

The message scrolling across the screens of the computer monitors began to morph and take on different shapes but I that was merely a distraction.

"Jill, did you see that?"

"More to the point did you hear that?" Kendo asked.

Kendo who had been leading the group in impromptu stretching exercises whenever he got the chance began to rock back on forth on the balls of his feet, humming in tune with the sound being emitted from the machines. It began as low-level steady throbbing steady and sure, but as we listened more closely the steady beat was undercurrent by a higher octave counterpoint. 

I had half expected that any signal we would receive in response to our own messages would be more something on the order of binary code, a string of zeroes and ones. I guess that goes to show that one should not always build on expectation. That aside, the sound was purposeful and it melodic. But for all it's alien harmonics just on the edge of understanding, as I looked around at the faces of my fellow astronomers; I think we were all subsumed.

Kendo seemed to be the first to pick on that unspoken familiarity, that unspoken moment before we could put into words just what it was that so familiar yet alien about the harmonics we were hearing. 

"Kujira," said Kendo softly, so softly that we had to ask to repeat what he had said. 

"It means whale. I cannot confirm that with any degree of assurance, but I have a colleague who is involved in the conservation of the minko hinto whale and who knows a great deal about the genus."

"Now that you mention it, Kendo, it does sound like the vocalizations frequencies used by the Pacific Humpback Whale. Why would that be?" I asked.

"Could it be that these messages come from somewhere in the vicinity of Tau Ceti?" Lucinda chimed in. Lucinda had always been the one most likely to reach for that eureka moment, but she was also very good at employing the empirical method and it made her a good astrophysicist. "How about binary code, or piezo-electric frequencies?" I mean, think about it, this might very well be the beginnings to an actual first contact with an alien intelligence and what's to say that whatever life forms are out there have to be anything like us?"

"At least a little like us, if we're to find any common ground." 

Undaunted Lucinda continued, "If so, we need to respond. Tell that we're here and we're willing to keep the lines of communication open"

"What do we say?" Lucinda asked.

" I don't know. But we'll think of something."

"How about we are your friends?" Lucinda suggested. "Today we declare World Contact Day."

"It's a good thought but it might be a bit much," Kendo replied. 

"Whatever message we send we best reply in the manner that they'll understand."

"Harmonics, I think somebody has probably composed music incorporating whale sounds," mused Lucinda, at least I think it's been done. But we'll need to do more than reproduce them."

"Agreed, then let's get to work."


End file.
